When I think about companies that might advocate for domain name investing, Verizon is not one of the first few dozen that would pop into my head. In fact, Verizon has been fairly aggressive towards cybersquatters over the years. Obviously domain investing and cybersquatting are not one and the same, but I do think there is a fair amount of overlap, particularly with newer domain investors who don’t really know the laws about cybersquatting.

This morning, I was doing a bit of research on Google related to domain investing and the companies who are advertising, and I came across an article on Verizon’s website about domain investing: It’s Not Too Late To Start Domain Investing. To say that I was surprised there is an article about domain investing on Verizon’s website would be an understatement.

In May of last year, I wrote about the possibility of fractional domain name ownership coming to Rally, a venture backed platform that allows users to purchase shares in various types of collectible assets. Yesterday on Domain Name Wire, Andrew Allemann reported that Rally has added domain names as an asset class to its platform. Fractional ownership shares of Directions.com will be for sale within the next couple of hours and other domain names appear destined to follow.

From what I understand, Andrew Rosener of Media Options has played a pivotal role in getting domain names added to Rally. This morning in a series of tweets, Rosener commented about why he became involved in the project and the value he expects it to bring to the domain name aftermarket:

By many accounts, this past year has been pretty excellent for domain name sales. I think the final numbers published on DNJournal and NameBio will reflect this. The sales numbers will only grow as domain name transactions are reported in SEC filings on a trailing basis.

It has gotten much more expensive to acquire domain names, but that is a natural result of a strong aftermarket. From my perspective, there are many sectors of the domain name aftermarket that grew this year. It’s not just a hot .com market.

Domain investing is a challenging business. It takes a considerable amount of time and money to build a domain investment portfolio, and there is no guaranteed success. Domain investing can be a lucrative business, but there is a pretty steep learning curve for most people.

This morning, I saw a tweet from someone named Tony who reported six figures in domain name sales:

In 2018, the Crypto.com domain name was reportedly acquired for $12 million. Perhaps because the sale price was never confirmed, it was not added to the DNJournal sales archive for 2018, where it would have ranked at the top of the chart. Since that time, Crypto.com has become a platform to buy and sell cryptocurrency with “a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency.”

It appears that Crypto.com is looking to turn itself into a well-known, mainstream cryptocurrency brand. I’ve noticed a big increase in television for Crypto.com over the last several weeks. Yesterday, it was announced that Crypto.com purchased the naming rights for the Los Angeles, California arena that has been known as the Staples Center since its opening in 1999: